


Home is the Sailor

by what_alchemy



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-19 16:04:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: The ice will make a feast of them all, but not tonight.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Blanky
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	Home is the Sailor

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Requiem"](https://poets.org/poem/requiem) by Robert Louis Stevenson.
> 
> Written for the "powerbottom" square of my Terror Bingo card.

Late in the night, Francis sat on the bench staring out the window of the great cabin. Green light shot through the endless darkness of the sky and billowed high above the ships like sails let, whilst ice and snow jutted and drifted up from beneath them like great white clouds paused in their undulations. In truth the ice was a monster more ravenous than the Tuunbaq, and both _Erebus_ and _Terror_ would be claimed for the satiation of its appetite sooner rather than later. Francis had vowed his men would not be the lambs sleeping inside the slaughterhouse when it happened. 

They would walk out week after next.

Francis should be preparing. He should be discussing rations and making plans to find game and poring over his maps and finalizing his routes. He should have his second in here, his command team, his Ice Master. Instead he was gazing out onto the wasteland of his failure as all his illusions crumbled before him. He longed for the heft and weight of a glass in his hand. The smell of it. The burn in so much cold. He closed his eyes; he closed his fist. 

There were certain lies Francis had employed to comfort himself for decades. First, that he would be seen and valued for his skills rather than judged by his country, his accent, his low birth. Second, that the love of a good woman would be the balm for all his ills, and once he found and married her, he would subside into a comfortable retirement without significant turmoil of the personal, professional, or financial variety. Third, that each manner of drink had a character of its own, and if he just avoided gin, he would still be the kind of man his father wasn’t, the kind of man who rose to the admiralty, who cherished his wife enough never to hit her, who doted upon the children he would surely dandle upon his knee. 

Francis’s eyes, cleared of the drink for the first time since he was a lad, were open now.

Three quick raps at his door shook him from his reverie. 

“Enter,” he called.

Thomas—Blanky rather than Jopson—stepped into the great cabin and the sight of him lifted Francis’s spirits as surely as the sight of a lead in the ice would have done. But he leaned on a cane, his new leg heavy on the deck beneath him, and Francis’s heart plummeted so deeply it inspired nothing so much as a vertiginous nausea. Francis’s mouth arced downward into a deep frown.

“Thomas, Christ.”

“Come off it, Frank,” Thomas said, stumping towards him. “I could feel you morbing away from five doors down and I’m here to tell you right where to shove it.” He pulled a chair out from under the table and dropped himself into it opposite Francis. He held Francis’s gaze like a challenge, and Francis could not look away though his lungs quailed and his guts quivered. He tried on a smile, though it came out a grimace.

“And where’s that, Thomas?”

“I’d say ‘where the sun don’t shine’ but that’s a bit on the nose these days, eh?” Thomas gave a hearty laugh, head thrown back, slapping his own thigh. Francis wanted to reach out, to rub where skin met wood, where Thomas was surely sore, but he knew they were beyond such liberties now.

“I wish I had a drink to give you,” Francis said, “but you’ll have to settle for my sincerest apologies instead. I’m sorry, Thomas. I’m so fucking sorry.” 

Thomas’s laughter subsided, but his smile was wide and his gaze fond. He leaned forward and clapped Francis on the shoulder.

“None of that,” he said, gruff. “You were forgiven the moment you decided to dry out. I’ll not have you wallowing on my account.”

“Thomas…”

“And o’er what? A little leg? Who needs it?” He lifted the leg in question and banged on it with the cane. “An original John Bridgens.” He put on a ridiculous posh voice that sounded suspiciously like one James Fitzjames. “I daresay it’ll be all the rage when we get back.”

Francis’s grimace melted into a real smile. He reached out both of his hands, and Thomas caught them with his own. He was warm and alive and their palms fit together just so, as they always had. Francis’s traitorous body, as if awakened from decades of slumber, flamed to life at the touch of skin against skin. His breath left him raggedly, and he tried to pull his hands away but Thomas held fast. He looked up and found Thomas smirking, eyes lit with heat.

“Come on, old cock,” he said, voice low now. “I know what you need.”

Thomas had got married more than ten years ago, and their assignations had ended by unspoken agreement. Francis was fond of Esther. Francis was godfather to Thomas’s children. And if he was wistful for simpler times, especially alone in the cold of his own berth, he had never spoken of it to Thomas himself. He was a man with no claims on Thomas’s affections beyond brotherhood and friendship and long, happy history.

“I—” Francis cleared his dry throat. “I would not ask this of you.”

“When did you ask?” Thomas said. “There’s nowt I don’t offer freely. It’s just you and me, Francis. Just auld Tommy and Frank, like we used to be.”

“Esther…”

“Good woman, that Esther,” Thomas said, tangling their fingers together. Francis fancied he could feel their pulses beat against their soft flesh, keeping time in unison. “Smart as a whip. Nothing gets by her.”

Francis looked up, caught hopelessly in the lock of Thomas’s gaze. Thomas freed his hands at last, only to scoot his chair closer, to bracket Francis’s knees with his own, to cup Francis’s face and draw his thumbs over Francis’s cheekbones.

“Esther and I understand each other,” Thomas said. “Do you and I?”

Francis knew he should pull away, but he let his forehead rest on Thomas’s instead. He knew he should stand and thank Thomas for his kindness before bidding him good-night. He should refuse him, he should form the word “no” and send it tripping off his tongue like nothing. He should make sure Thomas knew Francis didn’t deserve his forgiveness, his kindness. His love.

Instead, he breathed out the name of God, not in blasphemy but in prayer, and pulled Thomas into his lap, tilted his head up and caught his lips. Heat blossomed between them, an inferno in all the cold. Familiarity persisted despite the years that separated this kiss and their last, despite the lack of whiskey to dull the taste of him. Thomas’s tongue swept inside his mouth, big and aggressive and consuming. It was a surrender—not a defeat but a relief. It was just like coming home.

Francis clutched at Thomas, hands greedy for the touch of his skin. He imagined his own flesh a tender sponge, sucking up all of Thomas’s warmth, his desire, the way he always knew exactly what Francis needed. His hands roamed down Thomas’s back and over his arse—meager these days and wasted as the environs in which they found themselves, but the touch spurred him to grind into Francis’s lap, growling and groaning. 

Roughly Thomas shoved Francis away and stood. Francis tore open his trousers to release his rampant cock just as Thomas freed his own. Thomas’s prick bobbed up proud and eager as it ever was in Francis’s memory. He stepped out of his trousers and smalls, and pushed Francis deeper into the seat to clamber atop him and straddle his hips. Or, that was what he would have done fifteen, twenty years ago—now he could only swear and swivel himself in an attempt to accommodate the wooden leg.

Francis reached out and set his hands on Thomas’s hips to still him. Thomas’s chest heaved, and a glance upward revealed his lip caught between his teeth. Francis trailed his gaze back down as he stroked over Thomas’s thighs. He could see that the flesh where his knee had been was a livid, pearly pink—on its way to healed but not yet there. 

“Would it be easier to take the leg off?” Francis asked. He flicked his eyes up to meet Thomas’s again. Thomas’s color was high, and his eyes blazed.

“If you can bear the sight of it,” Thomas said, jaw clenching. 

Francis murmured his name and leaned forward to nose into Thomas’s thatch of hair, to breathe him deep, and finally to suck that cock into his mouth. The smooth head, unencumbered by extra flesh, fit against the roof of his mouth as if by divine design. Thomas swore and wove his hands into Francis’s hair to hold him in place.

Francis opened his mouth and his throat, sucked him and tongued him and swallowed him around all the words he could not say as his hands drew loving trails down Thomas’s arse, his thighs. Thomas had always understood him. He would understand him in this.

Thomas eased Francis’s head away and unbuckled the wooden leg. It clattered to the floor as he sat himself, comfortably now, back in Francis’s lap. Francis drew a hand down the length of his thigh, soft where he reached puckered flesh, hotter than the rest of him.

“Does it still hurt?” Francis murmured.

“Aye,” Thomas said, and rocked his prick against Francis’s. Francis moaned and let his head loll back against the windowsill. Francis held on to Thomas’s arse as Thomas squeezed their pricks together and surged atop him. Thomas kissed him not like a lover but like a storm eager to consume all in its path. Thomas could ever draw Francis’s consciousness from him, leaving him entranced and trembling, and time had not abated his passions. 

After these long, drugging kisses, after the skin on their cocks had grown slick with their enthusiasm, Thomas pulled away and Francis watched in a daze as he gathered a pool of saliva and spat it into his hand. He reached behind himself and only a twitch of his expression betrayed how roughly he prepared his body. He pushed Francis’s shoulders against the bulkhead as he rose up and then sank down the length of Francis’s cock. Francis watched his face in awe, but the hot tight grasp of Thomas’s arse overcame him and his eyes fluttered shut as he gasped. He clutched at Thomas’s back and laid his head against Thomas’s chest, yet adorned with his uniform jacket.

“Ah, fuck, Frank,” Thomas hissed, his home thick in his voice. He held himself still as his body quivered, taut as a violin string, around him. “Missed ye there.” His breath came heavily in Francis’s hair, his arms tight around his neck. He was hot as hellfire inside and tighter than Francis remembered. Francis kept himself from thrusting wildly into the clench of Thomas’s body. 

“Thomas, Jesus,” Francis said. “Fuck, Thomas.”

“Easy, pet,” Thomas said. “I’ve got you. Easy now.”

Thomas rose and fell on him like the tide while Francis held on, helpless but to be buffeted about by the force of Thomas’s fervor. He closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the sensation of being thoroughly fucked by one who knew him—perhaps the only one, anymore. He sank into memory as surely as Thomas sank onto his cock.

Thomas, young and dashing on the _Hecla_ , falling in love with the ice.

Thomas, gripping his hand as Parry and the crew abandoned _Fury_ to the ever-hungry maw of that same ice. 

Thomas, knocking back a finger of whiskey only to kiss it into Francis’s waiting mouth and chase it with his tongue.

Thomas, passing him a pint as he broke the news—“I’ve met this lass.”

Thomas, smirking at him from behind the bar even as he said, “Aye, Frank. I’ll be your Ice Master.”

The joy of it, the ecstasy drove away the shadows at the edge of his mind that whispered that Thomas would be whole and well in the bosom of his family if Francis had never walked into his pub that last time, that Thomas would never have to wonder if he should bury an axe in his captain’s neck again if Francis hadn’t said _please, Thomas_ in the way that he knew Thomas couldn’t resist. That Thomas would live had he never met Francis at all. 

But he was tight, and he was whispering to Francis that he was good, and strong, and brave, that he was proud and chuffed and glad to know him, that he’d missed him and his great titan of a cock. Francis forgot it all in the heat of Thomas’s arse, on the well-traveled paths of their coupling. 

Thomas gripped his prick within him and snapped his hips hard.

“Thomas,” Francis gasped. His pleasure sharpened and wound tight around the base of his spine.

“Come on, Frank,” Thomas said. “Flood me, make me feel it, Frank, come on, come on.”

Francis’s hands were convulsive on Thomas’s hips. He was coming down hard in Francis’s lap, and Francis could feel his body reaching for the point of no return.

“There’s a lad,” Thomas said, “there he is, my Frank, come on, come on.”

Francis gasped, breath stuttering, and then he shattered, his body and spirit dissolving like a thousand crows intent on soaring far away from here. He thrust gracelessly into Thomas’s body with a series of choked grunts and held on as if he might fall off the very ends of the earth without Thomas as his anchor. 

He came back to himself with his head crushed to Thomas’s chest, Thomas’s hands in his hair. He was rocking slowly and squeezing at his softening cock. Francis pulled his head back to look up at him. He was red and dewey with sweat. Lamplight haloed his head. Francis swallowed, dropped a hand to Thomas’s leaking cock. Thomas’s head fell back and he moaned.

“You’re always taking care of me,” Francis said. “Where would I be without you, Thomas?”

“Francis,” Thomas said, voice tight. Francis rocked up into Thomas’s rhythm even as he yanked at Thomas’s prick. Thomas’s breath shuddered out of him as he spent in thick ropes over Francis’s hand and shirt, his belly and thicket of hair. 

“Fuck, Thomas, that’s lovely.”

Thomas huffed out a laugh and slumped over him, face tucked into Francis’s neck. Francis slid his hands under Thomas’s bare arse to keep him from sliding bonelessly to the freezing floor, uncaring as to how soiled they were. They sat there under the windows, melting one into the other, until the lamplight dimmed for want of more fuel, and Francis’s cock slipped from Thomas’s arse.

Thomas grunted and sat up, arse no doubt threatening a mess. Francis maneuvered him onto the bench and fetched a wet rag from his berth. When he came back to hand it over, Thomas was fastening his leg back onto his stump.

“Stay,” Francis blurted. Thomas looked up, brows raised. Francis thrust the rag at him, and he took it cautiously, as if from a wild beast of unknown intention. “Stay with me tonight. If—if it pleases you.”

Thomas leaned over and pressed the rag to his hole with a wince. Francis wanted to be the one cleaning him up, soothing away the soreness, watching his own spend slip from Thomas’s body. He took a step forward and knelt before Thomas, laying his hands on his thighs. 

“My berth is bigger than yours,” he said.

Thomas smiled with one side of his mouth.

“Barely,” he said. “And gone are those striplings we once were.”

Francis pressed his lips together to keep them from trembling. Thomas sighed and pushed the hair out of Francis’s eyes, cradled his face.

“All right,” Thomas said, soft. “But leave me the dignity of using the captain’s seat of ease alone for a moment.”

Francis tipped his head up to kiss him. He was plundered all over again—Thomas did not kiss with anything less than wild abandon. 

He repaired to his berth, where he cleaned himself up. Thomas’s stumping gait announced him, and Francis looked up when the door to his sleeping quarters swung open to reveal Thomas Blanky, Ice Master. Undiminished. Francis’s breath caught and his heart flipped. He felt like a ship’s boy again, standing astonished before his first glimpse of the wide open sea. 

He held out his hand, and Thomas took it.

**End**


End file.
